One of the uses for Live that I never hear talked about is the "Ambient Soundscape", ala Steve Roach...

Live amazes me, the possibilities are endless in the terms of playing un-synced sounds routed through effects chains, resampling them, introducing new sounds from a mic or turntable. Whatever your heart's desire (as long as you have the processor strength)... All done LIVE!

I've performed a couple of times with Live on my Tibook 667, once with only a turntable and kaoss pads, another time using Reason (improvising musically, kind of like Harold Budd)...

Using Live in an Eno-like reel-to-reel tape system way can be very rewarding, playing out live. Not only the improvisational possibility, but back at home you have the recorded material to recycle all over again.

I remember first hearing about Live and being amazed. I wanted something like this program for years, and there it was...

yes, the program is wonderful in all aspects, one of the few programs that actually inspires you while you are working with it. Ableton has done an upstanding job.
please continue to do your thing and share what and how you do it with the rest of us, it will help all live users grow.

and don't be put off by the ignorant that frequent this forum, all we need to do is ignore them, and post around them.

Brian Eno, the guy from the seventies (who later produced Talking Heads and U2), is who coined the term "Ambient".

On his album "Discreet Music", he used a reel-to-reel tape recorder delay and a moog to introduce music, somewhat indiscriminately, and ongoingly, to produce a long flowing composition. The delay (a 30-second or so delay) reintroduces previously played sounds back into the song. It's very automatic, with instant creative feedback. The album was produced in his kitchen, over tea...

Other ideas he's used; multiple tape players with tape at different lengths. The music, or ambiences, looping at different intervals, continuosly morph together to make an ongoing ambience.

The reason Live is so revolutionary, is that it brings all of those tape recorders and effects together, affordably, and in your face. When I record in Live, I don't need to have everything in sync, each track could be like a different length of tape. I can also record different lengths of tape as those lengths are still playing.

The fun part begins when I connect a device, like a midi fader box, to bleed those tape lengths into the effects returns. I can also control the effects themselves. Thick dampened reverb in my favourite.

Live becomes the "instrument" with which you play. All that's needed is sound sources. Sometimes I just find cheap wav effects on the net, and warp 'em. Reason's extremely handy for making polyrhythms and synth beds. My mind could wander through Live, endlessly...

i own discreet music (from my father) and listen to it right now. he used a 'synthesizer with digital recall system' (...) going throug eq - echo units and huge delay lines . very nice sounds .

cool input. it's the vice versa to how i currently work with live -> deconstructing phrases, cut microseconds of loops with scutphuzz , which is such a handy plugin, and bring them together again in a different context.

it's about 'creating music with little or no intervention from the artist' (eno). some kind of randomness. i like that :I)

One of the uses for Live that I never hear talked about is the "Ambient Soundscape", ala Steve Roach...

Can any of you understand what I'm driving at?

-lowbot

I understand completely.
That's exactly what I bought Live for, and it's perfect for this. I'm not really interested in doing beat oriented music. I've been doing this type of ambient space music for years and Live with Reason 2.0 (especially the Malstrom synth) makes it easier to try different textures spontaneously rather than using stacks of hardware and effects. Can't wait for Absynth to be OS X compatible so I can use it with Live and R2 also without having to boot into OS 9 ever again.